Studies in Ethics, Law, and Technology Volume 2, Issue 3 2008 Article 1 Bloody Wednesday in Dawson College - The Story of Kimveer Gill, or Why Should We Monitor Certain Websites to Prevent Murder Raphael Cohen-Almagor∗ Sharon Haleva-Amir† ∗University of Hull, [email protected] †University of Haifa, [email protected] Copyright c 2008 The Berkeley Electronic Press. All rights reserved. Bloody Wednesday in Dawson College - The Story of Kimveer Gill, or Why Should We Monitor Certain Websites to Prevent Murder∗ Raphael Cohen-Almagor and Sharon Haleva-Amir Abstract The article deals with the Dawson College Massacre, focusing on the story of Kimveer Gill, a 25-year-old man from Laval, Montreal who wished to murder young students in Dawson College. It is argued that the international community should continue working together to devise rules for monitoring specific Internet sites, as human lives are at stake. Preemptive measures could prevent the translation of murderous thoughts into murderous actions. Designated monitoring mechanisms of certain websites that promote violence and seek legitimacy as well as adherents to the actualization of murderous thoughts and hateful messages have a potential of preventing such unfortunate events. Our intention is to draw the attention of the multifaceted international com- munity (law enforcement, governments, the business sector including Internet Service Providers, websites’ administrators and owners as well as civil society groups) to the shared interest and need in developing monitoring schemes for certain websites, in order to prevent hideous crimes. KEYWORDS: internet monitoring, violent websites, Dawson College Massacre, Jokela High School Massacre, Internet Governance, Kimveer Gill, VampireFreaks.com ∗We are grateful to Janet Spikes, Carly Nuzbach, and Nick Mills for their most valuable assistance. Cohen-Almagor and Haleva-Amir: Bloody Wednesday in Dawson College 1 INTRODUCTION When the idea of the Internet was first conceived by visionaries such as Vannevar Bush,2 Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider,3 Douglas Angelbart4 and Paul Baran,5 they could not have imagined the present fascinating state of the Internet. The multi- faceted nature of the Internet and its international proliferation has benefited millions of users around the world. The Net serves as a communication medium comprising all other media. It is an arena for a wide array of public debate, a social network, an infrastructure for digital commercial activities, and a mega- sized information bank. The Internet, however, can be used for positive purposes as well as for negative and wicked purposes. As usage of the Internet became widespread, some of the expectations we had for the Internet, including its ability to facilitate global communication, serve as a new central public space, and provide a point of free access to a variety of information sources have already been realized; however, other expectations have not yet come to fruition, including its capability to function as a democracy enhancing tool and as a device to lessen literacy gaps. Expression over the Internet enjoys nearly unrestricted freedom, obtained mainly as the result of the web’s architecture: 1. Dissemination of information is far-reaching, global, cheap, and fast. 2. There is a vast range of websites on every human-interest topic, which are free of charge and open accessed, providing a public stage. 3. Internet users can ignore time and geographical gaps. 4. The ability to encode contents is quite simple. 5. Most websites allow anonymity, identity games and maleficent impersonation. All of the above can serve the interests of negative agents and their harmful objectives. The web is replete with detailed, accurate manuals designed to “teach” the average person how to commit crimes, assemble weapons and explosives, and commit suicide. New technologies are facilitating traditional criminal activities 1. All websites were last accessed on October 2, 2008. 2. Vannevar Bush, "As We May Think”, The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 176, No. 1 (July 1945), pp. 101- 108. http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/194507/bush . 3. Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider, "Man-Computer Symbiosis”, IRE Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics, Volume HFE-1 (March 1960), pp. 4-11. http://groups.csail.mit.edu/medg/people/psz/Licklider.html . 4..Douglas C. Angelbart, "Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework”, Summary Report AFOSR-3223 under Contract AF 49(638)-1024, SRI Project 3578 for Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Stanford Research Institute, Menlo Park, Ca., (October 1962). http://www.bootstrap.org/augdocs/friedewald030402/augmentinghumanintellect/ahi62index.html . 5. Paul Baran, "On Distributed Communications Networks”, IEEE Trans. Comm. Systems, Vol. CS-12 No. 1 (March 1964), pp. 1-9. Published by The Berkeley Electronic Press, 2008 1 Studies in Ethics, Law, and Technology, Vol. 2, Iss. 3 [2008], Art. 1 and creating avenues for new and unprecedented forms of deviance.6 On the Internet people exchange fantasies as to how they would like to violently rape and murder young girls.7 Recipes for producing weapons and bombs are posted as well as manuals on acts of violence, including how to become a successful hit- man,8 how to build practical firearm suppressors, and how to carry out car bomb attacks.9 One site calls on people to "save the planet, kill yourself."10 It advises people to "do a good job" when they commit suicide, saying: "Suicide is hard work. It's easy to do it badly, or make rookie mistakes. As with many things, the best results are achieved by thorough research and careful preparation." 11 While some celebrate this as a democratizing, publicly empowering characteristic of the Internet that promotes intellectual and social progress, the hazards of such websites should not be ignored. In the absence of clearly defined boundaries to free expression, anarchy might encroach on both the virtual and the real world.12 One of the ways to confront the dangers of boundless speech over the web is monitoring such dangerous, anti-social websites as well as ones that are likely to be used for creating social support groups for potential criminals. The idea is not to implement surveillance of the entire Internet, something that we oppose on principled, free speech grounds and that is very costly and probably impractical, but to monitor the spaces of the Internet that are potentially harmful in order to detect and forestall crimes. This article focuses on the story of Kimveer Gill, a 25- year-old man from Laval, Montreal who wished to murder young students in Dawson College. We hold that the monitoring of certain sites on which criminals voice their violent goals could potentially prevent unfortunate events like this particular incident. We do not support censorship of the Internet, nor do we aim to induce Moral Panics13 among Internet users because we do not see the Internet 6. Matthew Williams, “Policing and Cybersociety: The Maturation of Regulation within an Online Community”, Policing and Society, Vol. 17, No. 1 (March 2007), pp. 59-82, on p. 60. 7. Cf. U.S. v. Baker and Gonda 890 F. Supp. 1375, U.S. District Court, E.D. Michigan (June 21, 1995); U.S. v. Alkhabaz 104 F.3d 1492 (6th Cir. 1997). For further discussion, see Jennifer E. Rothman, "Freedom of Speech and True Threats", Harvard J. of Law and Public Policy, Vol. 25, Issue 1 (2001). 8. http://ftp.die.net/mirror/hitman/ ; for further discussion, see Rice v. Paladin Enterprises Inc., No. 96-2412, 128 F.3d 233 (November 10, 1997). 9. Yaakov Lappin, “Al-Qaeda’s car bomb guide”, Ynet (January 7, 2007) (Hebrew). 10. http://www.churchofeuthanasia.org/index.html . 11. Ibid. 12. Raphael Cohen-Almagor, "In Internet's Way” in Mark Fackler and Robert S. Fortner (eds.), Ethics and Evil in the Public Sphere (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, forthcoming). 13. Moral Panic is a sociological term coined by Stanley Cohen. The term refers to a reaction made by a group of people based on a false or exaggerated perception that a cultural phenomenon, behavior or group (mostly minority group or subculture) is dangerously deviant and poses a threat to society. An important factor in Moral Panic is the deviancy amplification spiral – an increasing cycle of media reports on undesirable events or behaviors which induce the moral panics in society http://www.bepress.com/selt/vol2/iss3/art1 2 Cohen-Almagor and Haleva-Amir: Bloody Wednesday in Dawson College as "a threat to societal values and interests.”14 Technology is not the problem. The problem is created by individuals who abuse technology to advance criminal agendas. Indeed, the Internet is a useful platform that has changed daily life forever and is here to stay, but we must devise ways to deal with its less positive aspects. Our intention is to draw the attention of the multifaceted international community -- law enforcement officers, governments, civil society groups -- to the urgent need of developing monitoring schemes of potentially problematic websites, in order to prevent homicide. Our expectation for international co- operation by all parts of society is not based on any existing legal obligations but rather upon the moral obligations that crosses borders and cultures regarding the sanctity of life and the urgency to save lives and prevent crimes. The Internet business sector (Internet Service Providers, websites' administrators and owners) bears an even heavier responsibility, since the moral obligations imposed on them may in due course become a legal obligation as was the case with child pornography and cybercrime.15 By “potentially problematic websites” we refer to websites that have the potential to attract criminals to post their criminal ideas and criminal intentions. Law-enforcement agencies are acquiring experience and understanding of social networking on the internet. Their work facilitates flexible schemes for identifying those websites and how criminals are using them. Analyzing several case studies most notably that of Kimveer Gill and VampireFreaks.com, the site which hosted his murderous thoughts, we argue that if the police were to monitor this site as well as other known such sites on a regular basis, bloodshed could have been prevented.